Slashdot Mirror

ask and ye shall receive

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=913086&SD=tech

I haven't heard of this before, (just found it, actually), but would this be a reasonable facsimile?
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=913086&SD=tech

Via the Autopatcher torrent page Be polite

Captcha = Bypass
thought it appropriate

*shameless copy & paste*

"Patches can be slipstreamed anyway, and for the mother of all 'off-line patching systems' there's Windows Server Update Services."

Patches can be slipstreamed anyway, and for the mother of all 'off-line patching systems' there's Windows Server Update Services.

That said, the overall rhetoric of this move still isn't nice. AutoPatcher was at the very least, a handy tool for people that didn't know about the above methods, and to leave it 4 years in the game before sending in the lawyers isn't a nice way of treating the user community. A shame if you ask me.

6. Switch to a different virtual desktop

Honestly, Virtual Desktops are AMAZING! Forget Alt+Tab, then they still see Slashdot on the taskbar. With Virtual Desktops, you can have one desktop for real work, one for slashdot and email, one for Pr0n and another for whatever else you need! And now they have it for Windows XP, too, not just linux!

Well, the fact that they still offer it for download would seem to contradict that statement.

It is besides the point of this article, but Microsoft does distribute GPL'ed software as part of the their Unix services for Windows migration platform. It includes among other things GCC.

They don't seem to maintain it anymore though, so probably no GPLv3 stuff.

I'm not going to argue your movie/burger analogy (+1 for originialty though!). However I would like to point out that MS did issue a concerning the GPL3 which is what prompted the response from the FSF.

And sure, maybe "most people" was over stating it a bit. How about - "enough people, including the FSF, feel differently". Of course you are right in that it will ultimately be up to a judge to decide whether or not MS's partnership with Novell and the voucher distribution constitutes software distribution.

Groove is great for this if you are on Windows. In fact you can have as many "nodes" for replication as you like. I use this all the time for syncronising data between my Laptop, Desktop & Home PC. 60 trial and the trial continues to work (without the ability to create new workspaces) after it expires.(See: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/FX1004876 41033.aspx)

Truly, they are evil, and any person of conscience could not work there and retain their integrity.

That's insightful? Let me explain a few things to you.

I work at Microsoft, and am damn proud of it. I would take offense to your comment if it weren't so ignorant.

First, let's make it clear that we're talking about an XML format going through the approval process by a standards organization. You base your judgement of good/evil on petty shit like this, ignoring the fact that the employees of Microsoft (excluding Bill Gates), have donated more to charity than any other organization in the world. Last September, we passed the $2.5 Billion dollar mark. With the help of Microsoft's donation matching program, I have built ten schools in Africa in less than five years. What have you been doing? Trolling forums proclaiming that I have no integrity? That's infuriating. Grow up. Fix your priorities. Do something, and then criticize me.

Second, we're talking about companies joining and voting in support of Microsoft, with no proof that Microsoft has anything to do with it. If I want a candidate to win in the local elections, and the preliminary numbers point toward his/her loss, you better believe I'll sign up and voice my opinion at the last minute. The notion that Microsoft paid their fees is completely fabricated (along these lines, read press releases indicating that Microsoft also had nothing to do with HD-DVD's buyout the other week, despite /. theories).

Slashdot used to be worthwhile, but people (like you) have succeeded in turning it into a religious war. You're blinded by your hatred, and truly believe any success of Microsoft's is the worst thing that could happen in the world.

I typically don't bother posting in response to zealots, but you're so badly in need of new priorities that I made an exception.

Reflect on yourself, the hyperbole you use, and what really matters to you. If you then decide you like where you are, fine. If not, even better.

windows' built in offline files is great; i only started using it in the last year or two and i feel like i have come from hiding and into the light.

the system is configurable through group policy which makes it easy to setup the system throughout an enterprise.

here are some links:

how to use offline folders http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307853

in your case, there is a way to fix offline folder problems (when and if they occur) have a look at:

how to re-initialize offlines files cache: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/230738/en-us

last but not least, here is a link to group policy for offline folders: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/lib rary/9dba5df2-0359-4fa4-bdcf-dd6ae5ca345e1033.mspx ?mfr=true

windows' built in offline files is great; i only started using it in the last year or two and i feel like i have come from hiding and into the light.

the system is configurable through group policy which makes it easy to setup the system throughout an enterprise.

here are some links:

how to use offline folders http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307853

in your case, there is a way to fix offline folder problems (when and if they occur) have a look at:

how to re-initialize offlines files cache: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/230738/en-us

last but not least, here is a link to group policy for offline folders: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/lib rary/9dba5df2-0359-4fa4-bdcf-dd6ae5ca345e1033.mspx ?mfr=true

windows' built in offline files is great; i only started using it in the last year or two and i feel like i have come from hiding and into the light.

the system is configurable through group policy which makes it easy to setup the system throughout an enterprise.

here are some links:

how to use offline folders http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307853

in your case, there is a way to fix offline folder problems (when and if they occur) have a look at:

how to re-initialize offlines files cache: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/230738/en-us

last but not least, here is a link to group policy for offline folders: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/lib rary/9dba5df2-0359-4fa4-bdcf-dd6ae5ca345e1033.mspx ?mfr=true

How about using redirection? I'm not sure if it is the same as offline folders, but you can redirect the folder to a place on the network. Here's microsoft's tactical explanation

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/w indows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/gpx_redirecthome.mspx

Even if you are not running active directory, on a windows pc, you can run gpedit.msc and enable redirection on an individual basis.

Although this document discusses using the "home directory" you can redirect to any network share and path.

For XP to support DX10 would require literally nothing more than compatible hardware with functional drivers supporting the DX10 API.

They would still just run on XP's driver model, and Microsoft is reluctant to backporting it from Vista to XP which I can understand from an effort standpoint. Vista's driver model was largely rebuilt in order to facilitate better scalability as a lot of cruft had collected over the years basically since Windows NT4.

Well... Yes, it has, because the OS changed

I think what he meant was that the driver model has changed, not the interaction with the OS. Obviously that will always change. But a new driver model doesn't necessarily have to be written just because a new OS is released -- actually, Vista is the first to have a major revision here since NT4. Vista tries to run much more in user mode now for example, in order to have driver bugs be less likely to cause BSOD's and instead be able to recover through through e.g. a TDR process.

If you're using Outlook 2003 or newer, the limitation has been increased to 20 GB. You can find more information here.

Wish I had more time to go into the specifics. But alas I'm rather busy.

There is a tool that I used to extract the information from the single file it stores all the information in. (csccmd http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884739 )

It is not an appropriate tool for a corporate environment, IMHO

The information on how to use this hack is not publicly available.

Um... what?

You mean besides this diagram of the steps you should follow when making a backup (and a similar one for restore), and the MSDN documentation for the VSS.

The information on how to use this hack is not publicly available.

Um... what?

You mean besides this diagram of the steps you should follow when making a backup (and a similar one for restore), and the MSDN documentation for the VSS.

But if you are stuck on a windows platform, take a look at Groove. It is one of M$ more recent purchases and included in their office suite. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/FX1004876 41033.aspx I would also welcome comments on its security (or lack there of).

If you're running Windows on the desktop (I know, I know) you right-click the folder and choose "Make available Offline".

It caches all files locally so if the server connection is lost, you can continue working. When you connect back up, it syncs the versions.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/ learnmore/offlinefiles.mspx

I'd second rsync.

I'd also take a look at Microsoft's SyncToy if you're on win***s.

Why do I feel like everybody, Microsoft advertisers included, are missing the point about DirectX 10 and Vista? It frustrates me. DirectX 10 is not some magical new API that somehow gives games a whole bunch of new features that can't be done with any other API. It won't magically make games look batter. It was built to make it easier to develop for. To improve flexibility. To be able to do complicated things easier and faster. And to create a new assured feature set.

OpenGL is very flexible. It can gain new features at any time with extensions. DirectX doesn't do that. With DirectX, all new capability is packaged into one version and to support that version of DirectX is to support all of the capabilities of it. DirectX represents a complete feature set. If your graphics card is DirectX 9.0c compatible, you can be assured of what it can do. Same as if it is DirectX 10 compatible.

Now, DirectX guarantees capabilities that are provided by the new Windows Vista graphics model, WDDM. WDDM does things like virtualizes graphics card memory, among others. With DirectX 10, when you Alt+Tab out of a full screen application, the application doesn't lose all of its resources. WDDM will maintain the content of video memory allocation across display transitions. Under the old Windows XP model, the application would lose its resources and have to re-create them when you Alt+Tabbed back in. Things like this are guaranteed under DirectX 10 now so applications won't have to maintain a copy of its resources in system memory.

I fail to see HOW Microsoft could backport DirectX 10 to Windows XP. The entire premise for DirectX is a guaranteed set of features you could rely on. Some of these new features rely on WDDM. Do you suppose Microsoft should backport WDDM to Windows XP? Do you realize the problems that would cause? Do you roll out the WDDM upgrade on patch Tuesday and have everybody's computers break at once? Do you make it an optional upgrade? Will everybody have to manage two different sets of Windows XP drivers?

Because of the major change in the underlying graphics model, all of this was pushed into Windows Vista. That way companies only need to support the one possible type of Vista, instead of two different types of Windows XP. It just makes sense.

Read the WDDM section of this and see: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa663366. aspx

I'm sorry. DirectX 10 isn't the holy grail of graphics APIs that guarantee better graphics. DirectX 10 won't be backported because part of its feature set relies on WDDM, the new Windows Vista graphics architecture. There. I feel better now.

One by one Securom has been blocking Sysinternal utilities that allow one to examine the security state and actions taken by Securom. It not only checks for programs currently running, but in some cases checks to see if you have ever run certain system security & status programs since you last booted.

In TombRaider:Anniversary, Securom (as required/included by Eidos), checks to see if you've run ProcExp at anytime since your last reboot.

ProcExp, or ProcessExplorer, is now distributed by microsoft (as in it's on microsoft's servers). They acquired it when they bought up "Sysinternals/Mark Russinovitch run sysinternal's, (now microsoft's) "Process Explorer" (ProcExp) -- a more powerful replacement for the standard MS-TaskMonitor) -- since you last *booted*. It doesn't just check to see if it is running when you start the game -- it checks, apparently, for some driver used/loaded by ProcExp when it first runs.

I presume either Windows drivers aren't unloadable, or ProcExp just doesn't reload it on each invocation, but only loads it on the first run after boot.

Either way...you run ProcExp, you can't run TR:A unless you reboot.

Quaintly enough, once TRA is running -- as long as you don't "quit" out of the game, you can run ProcExp with no problems -- TRA only checks on startup (presumable to hide securom's actions).

Interestingly, in the previous "TR:Legends", securom already prevented some sysinternal utils (at least filemon/regmon that I'm aware of) -- but at least then they didn't require you to reboot your machine if you had used them. That's really a pain for legitimate users. It's definitely a straw on the camel's back. I game to break from work for a while -- if I have to destroy my workspace setup via a required reboot, it makes the game far less valuable. Leaving it up is a partial workaround, but the game doesn't reset the sound after it's been minimized or paused -- so the longer it's up, the more distorted the sound gets....but who wants sound with their game anyway...:-/

Good "conspiracy theory". Ever heard of Singularity? Whole OS written in C, Assembler and Managed .NET. They've end-of-lifed FoxPro and VB6, I'm sure that ASP will dying. They've started moving big chunks of Office 2007 to .NET so it's probably just a matter of a few years before they're ready to dump everything into managed code and start rolling out Singularity (Windows 2010?).

You're really not that far off, people have been "waiting" for Vista, but this is really a throwaway OS, nobody is using it and it's not like business is "clamoring" for even this version. Heck many Enterprises have just finish rolling out XP. The new WPF and WCF will surely be functional under Singularity, and Enterprises are just now moving to Managed Code applications (check out the market for ".NET developers"). MS won't die away if this Vista "fails", so we're probably all looking at a Managed Code future in 2010 or 2011 :)

My suspicion is:

  A) Networking stack in Vista is rewritten, for example, IPv6 is native, IPv4 is optional.
        http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns /cableguy/cg0905.mspx

  B) Audio stack is re-written, allowing for the new mixer, where each app has its own volume control (and some DRM, but that's not relevent to this issue)
        http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=71 3073

  C) the Thread scheduler is changed in Vista
        http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2007/02/VistaKernel/

  D) Appears to only affect Gigabit and above networking.

  item C is possibly the key to this bug, I'm sure the Networking people did lots of perfomance testing, and so did the Multimedia people, as well as the Kernel folks... But, perhaps the full ramifications of the Thread Scheduler could not have been tested in every other combination.

  The basic problem is that Multimedia playback changes the thread scheduler, which affects EVERYTHING. it could have been "Inkjet Printing while playing audio fails", "cannot hot-swap IDE drives while playing audio", "an open audio application blocks hibernate if brand XYZ laptops"... by chance, gigabit networking performace was affected, not because of any direct link.

  Whats needed is for all performance or reliability minded software to be tested both normally, and while playing music in the background (or just with a program that turns on MMCSS, and then does nothing else). Just like when running under a debugger, multi-core machine, virtual machine, etc. different timing, thread deadlock, and race conditions may be found.

My suspicion is:

  A) Networking stack in Vista is rewritten, for example, IPv6 is native, IPv4 is optional.
        http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns /cableguy/cg0905.mspx

  B) Audio stack is re-written, allowing for the new mixer, where each app has its own volume control (and some DRM, but that's not relevent to this issue)
        http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=71 3073

  C) the Thread scheduler is changed in Vista
        http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues /2007/02/VistaKernel/

  D) Appears to only affect Gigabit and above networking.

  item C is possibly the key to this bug, I'm sure the Networking people did lots of perfomance testing, and so did the Multimedia people, as well as the Kernel folks... But, perhaps the full ramifications of the Thread Scheduler could not have been tested in every other combination.

  The basic problem is that Multimedia playback changes the thread scheduler, which affects EVERYTHING. it could have been "Inkjet Printing while playing audio fails", "cannot hot-swap IDE drives while playing audio", "an open audio application blocks hibernate if brand XYZ laptops"... by chance, gigabit networking performace was affected, not because of any direct link.

  Whats needed is for all performance or reliability minded software to be tested both normally, and while playing music in the background (or just with a program that turns on MMCSS, and then does nothing else). Just like when running under a debugger, multi-core machine, virtual machine, etc. different timing, thread deadlock, and race conditions may be found.

You sir, are a troll. You had to use make because you were installing from a source distribution. Ever tried using a source tarball on Windows?

Ever noticed Windows doesn't even come with a compiler? Ever tried getting the Platform SDK ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=A55B6B43-E24F-4EA3-A93E-40C0EC4F68E5&displa ylang=en ) to compile *anything*?

Next time, compare apples to apples please. And don't forget to tell those friends and coworkers about gnome-app-install (Install/Remove under Applications).

Thread is here. Interestingly Microsoft have not deleted my comment (or the other person promoting Ubuntu on the next page). The thread has been locked and that's it.

They're either being good sports, or just haven't noticed our mentions of Ubuntu. Since Phil Liu (the MS bloke) seems to have read the thread, I'd expect the former is true.

Just the fact that this forum even exists, shows how defective by design WGA is. A dedicated forum to WGA problems with 226 PAGES with 20 TOPICS each... I still cannot understand why people keep buying this crap...

Let me quote another just calm down person:

For the last 18 hours or so, ... the nag screen, the message in the corner and Aero isn't working

So, he and every other Vista and XP user has got degraded graphics and two big blinking signs that tell them they are dirty bad pirates. I'm going to play a few games to celebrate. Oh yes, feel the warm, golden Windows Advantage.

JohninTN's contribution to that forum is just funny. He seems to think that people should just "calm down" when the functionality that they have paid (rather a lot of money) for suddenly doesn't work because of some MS boneheadedness. His attitude in this thread is quite amazing, in my opinion.

If you follow the link above it looks like MS has solved this problem within a couple of hours.

Microsoft frequently shill online forums, they're even attacking the venerable ISO! From this Groklaw article:

And if it were me, I'd want to know if there is any Microsoft shadow in the background. Someone placed a threatening comment on Groklaw the other day, saying someday the "darkness" behind PJ would be revealed, and to "sleep well", and because of the threatening tone, I checked the logs and the comment appears to have come from an ad agency that does a lot of work for Microsoft. So I am wondering about things I didn't think about before. I remember what happened to an innocent man's reputation in the Massachusetts ODF affair.

So, this would seem like the ideal time to feed them some of their own medicine. Get over to the WGA forums and do some pro GNU+Linux astroturfing. Here was my message:

I came here not because I have a problem but because the mainstream media is starting to pick up on this issue, I suspect that pressure on MS to fix the problem will tremendously increase once this hits a few news/social networking sites.

The reason I'm not having any issues? I use Ubuntu and have the pleasure of knowing my OS and computer are owned by me. Maybe a few people here should give it a try: you never know, it might work! If it doesn't, all you've wasted are a couple of hours when you couldn't use Vista anyway.

Either way, I hope these problems get fixed for you guys soon.

As long as you're polite and make a point it can only help the adoption of Free software. Show these people that we're not zealots and offer them a way out of the WGA doldrums! :)

As someone who also objectively likes Microsoft products I have to agree with you here. WGA makes the legitimate customer feel like a criminal.

"need to move my FreeNAS to a better box anyway so that's what I'll probably do after wiping it."

Perhaps you should pick up Microsoft Home Server? It will work out of the box and you won't have to spend hours recompiling the kernel etc. to get it to work.

Here is a good video.

Funny, I was starting to think that there would be a single day on Slashdot without an anti-Microsoft story.

As someone who also objectively likes Microsoft products I have to agree with you here. WGA makes the legitimate customer feel like a criminal.

"need to move my FreeNAS to a better box anyway so that's what I'll probably do after wiping it."

Perhaps you should pick up Microsoft Home Server? It will work out of the box and you won't have to spend hours recompiling the kernel etc. to get it to work.

Here is a good video.

Funny, I was starting to think that there would be a single day on Slashdot without an anti-Microsoft story.

To all those people who say "Nothing can go wrong with the system" and "I've never had a problem with activation."

This (redundant link) is what can go wrong, and it was only a matter of time. There is no such thing as an unsinkable ship. I believe in Murphy's Law, so long as you add the word "eventually" to the end of it.

--
Toro

Haven't tried it, because I don't need to. But....

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/softgrid/def ault.mspx

People should really RTFM of the tool they are using.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Util ities/RootkitRevealer.mspx

Check out Microsofts License-o-rama! If Microsoft as a corporation can't stick to even a few licenses what on earth makes anyone think that thousands of FLOSS programmers will share enough commonality among them that they would be willing to use fewer licenses.

Microsofts licensing site doesn't even address the individual EULA's for products. Each MS product has a license that is nearly always unique to that product. So I say let those that do the work decide on how they would like or not like to share it.

See also http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/23/ 2254254.

ASP.NET does support async pages, although not many people that I've seen know about them and use them.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/03/Wic kedCode/